South at Owen Valley boys’ hoops

FINAL: SOUTH 65, OWEN VALLEY 40. Freshman guard Tucker Blackwell, who had a nice weekend of play for South, had 15 points tonight to lead all scorers and Nolan King led OV with 11. Both teams played their entire varsity rosters, subbing quite a bit, so those were the only double-figure scorers, though OV’s Josh Roberts, who finished with nine points and nine boards, would have likely had a double-double had he not sat out the fourth quarter. OV coach Chad Smith said he did that to see how some of his other players would react against a quality 4A team in South without Parker’s presence on the floor.

END THIRD QUARTER: South 44, OV 23. Game proceeds at the same doubling the score sort of pace for South.

3:36: South 37, OV 21. Timeout Patriots. Both teams have missed a fair amount of makeable shots, but the effort is there.

HALFTIME: South 30, Owen Valley 15. As with the first period, the Panthers have doubled up the Patriots. Just as telling, if not more so , is that OV had six turnovers in each of the first two quarters for 12 at halftime while South had just two in each quarter for four. So OV having three times as many errors has a lot to do with South having twice as many points. Overall quickness is a big factor. Both teams playing hard. South freshman Tucker Blackwell leads all scorers with 10 points and Josh Parker has nine for OV.

5:44: South 18, Owen Valley 6. Timeout Patriots.

END FIRST QUARTER: South 12, Owen Valley 6. A pretty sluggish offensive start for both.

PREGAME: South’s Panthers have made the quick junket over to Spencer for a visit to OV, looking to get back to .500 on the season, and would be expected to do so by most, but the Patriots hung with them pretty well early last season and we’ll see if the home side can hang for a while tonight. South coach J.R. Holmes has altered his starting lineup considerably, with Noah Marks, Josh Martindale and Gage Rogers in for Keaton Hendricks, Johnathon Winters and Johnny Jager. As always, we’ll have quarterly scoring updates here and via Twitter at htograham.